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Portable, Battery-Powered Turntable. For Playing Records

If a gadget is on sale in Urban Outfitters, it’s a fair bet that its a piece of junk. The curious combination of good clothes and crappy novelty gifts is obviously aimed at ironic impulse-buyers, but the Crosley Radio Revolution is possibly the weirdest thing yet.

The Revolution is a small, portable, battery-powered turntable. Yes, a turntable for playing records. It comes with the requisite retro-styling and 1950s colorways, but just who will buy it? At $180, it is too much to buy as a joke gift for a friend who maybe still has a couple of LPs on the shelves. But it’s doubtlessly tinny built-in stereo speaker and lightweight tonearm aren’t going to do it for the real vinyl junkie: if you’re still buying grooved disks then you’re probably an audiophile or luddite. Either way the Revolution is not for you.

The Revolution does at least come with a USB-cable and software for ripping records to a computer. I imagine scouring rare-record dealers’ stores with one of these and a netbook or even iPad and quietly copying tunes in the listening booths.

Even if you do want this, you should avoid Urban Outfitters anyway. They might have an exclusive on those muted colors, but they also have an exclusive on that price. Buy on the web or slip over to JC Penny and you can have the black one for $30 less, at $150. Coming “soon”.